A gardener who waters plants and hunts humans—can love bloom in this soil?
Living in seclusion from the rest of the world, Daniel Bauer goes about his job as a gardener in the botanical gardens. A rather inconspicuous young man who, however, regularly breaks out of his motionless daily routine and commits indiscriminate acts of violence. When he gets to know Jana, a forlorn young woman, a tentative relationship develops between the two foreign bodies. She sees everything in the shy Daniel that she always wanted from a man. Yet she doesn't have any inkling of his dark side. After a first successful date between Daniel and Jana, the situation escalates. On the morning after the date, he shoots a jogger. A reaction to the beginning love?
Acting
Ken Duken's terrifying stillness
Direction
Sieben's refusal to explain the monster
Director
Thomas Sieben
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of the 'Berlin School' movement—German cinema's answer to slow-burn psychological unease, rejecting Hollywood explanations for evil.
Sieben deliberately shot Duken's violence scenes with the same flat lighting as his gardening scenes to collapse the moral distance between them.
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